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the casual observer, a mix of swirls and knots and spikes that seemed to shift with every movement, like Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man . My curiosity was piqued. I had heard of living tattoos, of creatures and objects moving and trapped in the skin of a witch or warlock, of power worked directly into flesh, but had never seen them before. I was mesmerized by his tattoos and how they moved and writhed on his skin. I was pretty sure my mouth dropped open a bit. I slammed it shut so I wouldn’t look like a teenage witch.
    I could feel the power there and I spotted some familiar shapes among the patterns, sigils that I’d been taught by my mother as a child. When I looked into his deep brown eyes, I knew I’d find the faintest hint of power there, held back. This man was a warlock. Through and through.
    Male witches—warlocks—were rarer than female ones for reasons no one fully understood. The known ratio of witches to warlocks was about ten to one. Even the ones who did have power seemed to have less than most female witches. A lot of warlocks with just a trace of talent looked for ways to improve on it, whether it was building up their physical strength, acquiring powerful items—such as wands, talismans, amulets, and the like—or simply having a witch work designs of power tattooed into his skin, turning himself into a kind of living weapon…one covered with the symbols of our magic art.
    I swallowed. The results of a well-developed warlock who had worked at the craft for years were most certainly impressive. This is the closest I had ever been to one. He was inches from me, closer than I liked to stand to anyone who was a stranger.
    “Elle Chambers,” Rebecca said, “this is Evert Masterson. Evert works for the coven.”
    “Charmed, I’m sure,” I quipped, but he didn’t laugh. That was a bad sign.
    I offered him my hand to shake. That is, I offered him the hand Rebecca didn’t have a hold on. After a moment, he took it. His grip was strong, but not crushing, like he knew his own strength perfectly.
    Up close, his voice was a gravelly rumble. “There are those who say that the very word warlock means oath breaker .”
    Well, that was one way to start a conversation. I wasn’t about to let him scare me that easily. “Well, luckily, we’re in Scotland, where the old word for warlock just means cunning man . It’s not a slur, but a compliment.”
    A low laugh rumbled out of his diaphragm, sounding rusty, as if he hardly ever laughed. Evert Masterson was obviously a man completely in control of his own strength, his own power, his own masculinity, and apparently, he had a small sense of humor. Very small.
    “You are an interesting woman, Elle,” he said, his eyes flickering over me from head to toe appreciatively. He didn’t seem remotely embarrassed about doing it, either.
    “I’ve been told that…very recently, in fact.”
    His small outburst of humor receded back into a mask where everything was measured and careful. His gaze flicked over to Rebecca, and I wondered if they were sleeping together. Then I silently wrote off the speculation. There was no way that someone like Rebecca would ever sleep with a man like him, was there? There was a spark of something between them that was strange and unidentifiable. Even for me.
    Rebecca wasn’t much help with that. Her shields were still laced tight.
    “Hello, Evert Masterson,” I said cautiously.
    “Hello, Elle Chambers.” Evert’s voice was deep and calm, but with a suggestion of far more somewhere beneath it. Like the ocean full of sharks, or a forest full of poison ivy sprites. “Wait a minute. Your surname is Chambers? Are you—”
    “Elle is Annette Chambers’ daughter,” Rebecca explained.
    Evert looked at her without saying anything for a moment. “You didn’t tell me that part when you roped me into this.”
    “I didn’t think she would become involved,” Rebecca said.
    “Actually, I suspect she was a little busy running